In the 1990s, the Personal Computer (or PC) was on the rise in homes, and with it came new genres of play. Yet most of the games in these new genres featured fantasylands or humorous science fiction landscapes with low stakes and little to suggest the potential of the PC as a serious space for art and play. Jane Jensen's work and landmark Gabriel Knight series brought a new darkness and personality to PC gaming, offering a first powerful glimpse of what games could be as they came of age. As an author and designer, Jensen brought her approach as a designer-writer hybrid to the forefront of game design, with an approach to developing environments through detailed research to make game settings come to life, an attention to mature dilemmas and complex character development, and an audience-driven vision for genres reaching beyond the typical market approaches of the gaming industry. With a brand new interview with Jensen herself, Anastasia Salter provides the first ever look Jensen's impact and role in advancing interactive narrative and writing in the game design process.

Anastasia Salter is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media at the University of Central Florida, USA. She is the author of What is Your Quest? From Adventure Games to Interactive Books (2014), Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media: Sexism, Trolling, and Identity Policing (2017), co-author of Flash: Building the Interactive Web (2014), and co-editor of the Electronic Literature Collection Vol. 3.

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Preface
Foreword
1 Introduction: Long Ago at Sierra
2 Being Gabriel Knight: Character and Research-driven Interactive Narrative
3 Hidden Objects: Crafting Mystery through Dazzle and Reward
4 Down Pinkerton Road: Jensen and the Adventure Game Renaissance
5 Jane Jensen: In Her Own Words
6 Legacy of a Writer-Designer
Gameography
Works Cited
Index